Rome in a Day: A Report from the Annual Meeting of the American International Consortium of Academic Libraries
By Maha Bali
May 25, 2016
As the mom of a young child, I’ve developed my own creative ways to attend conferences without leaving my child behind for long. Usually that means virtual participation, but it also sometimes means one-day minimalist conference participation. On Friday, May 13, I went to Rome for just one day to participate in the
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As the mom of a young child, I’ve developed my own creative ways to attend conferences without leaving my child behind for long. Usually that means virtual participation, but it also sometimes means one-day minimalist conference participation. On Friday, May 13, I went to Rome for just one day to participate in the annual AMICAL conference (held at the American University of Rome), but my participation was anything but minimal, thanks to some really clever (and generous) scheduling by the conference organizers. Side note: AMICAL events are really special because of the diverse community you find there. It’s a consortium of American/liberal arts style universities located outside the US, so you get to see both American and non-American participants, and the majority of the community are librarians, but you also get some faculty, faculty developers and technologists. Because of geographical proximity, closeness of timezones of many of the member institutions, and shared contexts, many participants already know each other and work together year-round (for example, I knew many people from the Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo which was sponsored by AMICAL; I knew other participants from the nearby American University of Beirut because I had visited several times, several of us work together on AMICAL committees year-round).
First, I had the pleasure of introducing Jim Groom and convening his keynote session. A group of us from AMICAL had met Jim online when we invited him to keynote - so we could help him brainstorm his talk and give him context on the audience. His talk (livestreamed and recorded here) was entitled Small is Beautiful: A Study of Ed Tech as if People Mattered. Jim spoke with the enthusiasm I had come to expect from him, and cleverly weaved in some of the ideas spoken just before him by the president of the American University of Rome. I was amazed by how much of the ‘80s US pop culture references made sense to the (about half-American, half-non-American) audience - I honestly only got about half of them, but his excitement was still contagious. His message of how small, bottom-up initiatives were the way to go rather than large top-down ones? That resonated really deeply with most of those present. I was partly distracted from listening to Jim’s talk by some technical problems with the audio in the livestreaming and trying to communicate those to onsite colleagues who did a great job fixing them. Note to self: convening a session is not all fun and games. I did realize, though, that it is easier to be introducing a keynote speaker you know and convening their session that it is to do the same with a stranger. For example, mid-way through Jim’s talk I had to ask him to change mics. If he had been someone unfamiliar to me, it would have been a lot more embarrassing to do something like this; with Jim, it was just comfortable interrupting him. Then again, that might just be about how easygoing Jim is. :)
After Jim’s keynote, he participated in a Virtually Connecting session, which Jim said was a really enriching conversation - it always interests me how some onsite speakers enjoy these intimate conversations with virtual participants. It helped that the keynote was livestreamed just before, so some of the virtuals had watched it. I couldn’t join for the full Virtually Connecting session because I was presenting a tech showcase (a poster-like session - you can look at it here: http://creativitycourse.populr.me/amical) with my co-teacher Hoda Mostafa, displaying the different creative assessments we do in our class, including an “alternative CV” which is based on a Digital Writing Month activity we did last year, a “liquefy the syllabus” (partly inspired by Michelle Pacansky-Brock), and some of the Twitter games I play with my students.
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The next session was Jim and me asking participants “Should Ed Tech Have an Ethos?” (livestreamed and recorded here). This session is one I really enjoyed preparing with Jim, and even though I already knew him quite a bit, we got to know each other better working on it, and discussing ways of making this session more interactive and fun. It was the kind of conversation that I comfortably write about, but do not often have the audacity to have face to face in a public setting. Doing it with Jim, though, gave me a lot of courage (partly also because I am even less radical than he is!) and it was interesting doing it where half the audience were AUC and AMICAL colleagues I knew well beforehand. It was a really interesting discussion, and we also had some participation via Twitter in response to some tweets Jim and I had scheduled beforehand. One of the active participants in our session was Laurie Allen, another of the keynote speakers at the event, and someone I really enjoyed talking to afterwards in the garden. (I later discovered my colleagues had been really impressed with her work with students on digital scholarships - her keynote is recorded here)
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After lunch, we had AMICAL committee meetings. I am leading the Digital Pedagogy Committee meeting and most of the committee members were present except for one who joined virtually. We had a productive meeting during which we somehow managed to synthesize ideas from Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo and various AMICAL conference sessions into plans for the coming year.
This was by far one of the most interesting and productive days of my year. I spent one day away from my child, and in that one day, I got to meet Jim Groom, introduce his keynote and listen to it; co-present about my teaching with my co-teacher, co-present with Jim on my ed tech philosophy, and meet with my committee members to form an action plan. I even managed to squeeze in some relaxed conversation with Jim, Laurie and AMICAL members Robbie, Dimitris and Nadine. I do realize, though, that by fitting in so many active roles, I did not get to listen to many sessions by others, so I am glad much of that is recorded. I’m still catching up on sleep. And also catching up on sessions I missed over the other two days of the conference. If you’re interested in the other keynotes, lightning talks and such, they’re all available here.
What was your most productive conference experience been? Tell us in comments!
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Header flickr photo Dimitris, Maha and Jim #4life by Dimitris Tzouris for AMICAL Consortium https://flickr.com/photos/amical-consortium/27046619915 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license, used with permission